“The Damage Done Will Be Very Considerable”

WORLD WAR I took an enormous toll in human lives and property. Less well known, however, is the damage that the war did to the image of Christendom’s missionaries in Africa. According to Catholic missionary Francis Schimlek in his book Medicine Versus Witchcraft, news of this global conflagration “was like an earthquake, the tremor of which was felt as far as the last mission station in the African bush. . . . The messengers of Christ were embarrassed, and the Native Christians puzzled.”

Why so? Schimlek quotes missionary Albert Schweitzer as explaining: “We are, all of us, conscious that many Natives are puzzling over the question how it can be possible that the whites, who brought the Gospel of Love, are now murdering each other, and throwing to the winds the commands of the Lord Jesus. When they put the question to us we are helpless. . . . I fear that the damage done will be very considerable.”